Misty Morning, outward bound – Extra Info

Par and Tywardreath feature in Daphne de Morrier novels and there was a time when the elderly author lived nearby.

Par was formerly a shallow lagoon fed by the River Par, an easy place for the inhabitants of neighbouring Tywardreath to fish.Tywardreath being the nearest village by which since earliest times small ships wouldbeach to load and off at the western foot of valley.

A bar formed were today we have the golden dunes and sands of Par beach.

As recently as the mid 18th century a schooner was wrecked just up valley near the present railway level crossing, now ½ a mile inland and the spot marked by a plaque on the bakery wall.

Joseph Thomas Austin described as a mining “adventurer” built the artificial tidal harbour at Par in 1830 on recovered land at Par, thereby fore filling a long held dream and a place for exporting his granite and copper ores.He soon added a ship building and repair yard, sail loft candle factory, a pilchard fishery, a granite yard (for cutting and dressing the stone), and a smelter for galena lead to recover silver.The village thrived and is to this day a working port.Austin went on to become sheriff of Cornwall in 1836 and bought Place House, Fowey, assuming the name and coat of arms of Treffry.

The copper mines in the area were very successful in the early and mid 19th century so the local ports and their ships thrived and expanded.Large quantities of granite and china clay also contributed to the success.In the 1860’s the railways were extended to the port.

The name most associated with Par harbour, Tregaskes appeared in the 1860’s, when a Saint Austell merchant, Samuel Moss launched the schooner, “Lizzie Trenberth”, built by chief shipwright Richard Tregaskes.It was his son, who was apprenticed to the yard and also served at sea and work a while in America Benjamin Moss Tregaskes who repaired the Stephens Fleet including Waterwitch and Jane Banks.